Operating Systems > Linux and UNIX
Could the greatest desktop environment be a free one?
Aloone_Jonez:
--- Quote from: Calum on 7 March 2010, 22:11 ---I've got an IBM M50. XP runs on it moderately slowly (but bearably) and XFCE4 runs on it under various ubuntu systems, at about the same speed. It's pretty pathetic actually, linux has become the bloatware it promised never to become. I can't run GNOME or KDE on this, and haven't been able to for years.
--- End quote ---
I Googled and found that it only has 256MB RAM which I think is the problem.
http://compreviews.about.com/cs/desktops/gr/aaprIBMTCentM50.htm
I was happy with 256MB (minus 8MB for on-board) graphics until abut three months ago when I upgraded to my brother's old graphics card, then I saw a 256MB module on ebay for £1 so bought that too.
That machine lasted me for another two months until I got my brother's old PC which has 1GB of RAM, I was going to upgrade to 4GB but I decided not to bother as I rarely use the full 1GB as it is.
Your hard drive might need upgrading to SATA, although the spec' I found says it's 7200rpm so it shouldn't be too bad.
In retrospect I wish I had upgraded my old machine to SATA because I needed a new drive and IDE drives are now more expensive and SATA controller plus a SATA drive would have cost the same as the crappy IDE drive. Unfortunately I didn't look into the cost of upgrading to SATA when I bought the new drive, oh well live and learn.:(
I had a quick look on ebay and someone's selling a 256MB module for £2.75 only including P&P. I strongly recommend getting a cheap 256MB module - I doubt you'll regret it.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PC2700-DDR333-184-pin-256-MB-DDR-RAM_W0QQitemZ310203731938QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_ComputerComponents_MemoryRAM_JN?hash=item4839954fe2
worker201:
--- Quote from: Aloone_Jonez on 7 March 2010, 23:02 ---
--- Quote from: Calum on 7 March 2010, 22:11 ---I've got an IBM M50. XP runs on it moderately slowly (but bearably) and XFCE4 runs on it under various ubuntu systems, at about the same speed. It's pretty pathetic actually, linux has become the bloatware it promised never to become. I can't run GNOME or KDE on this, and haven't been able to for years.
--- End quote ---
I Googled and found that it only has 256MB RAM which I think is the problem.
--- End quote ---
I think you may have missed Calum's point entirely. Then again, maybe I did too. But the first thing I thought of when I read his post was the scene from a few years ago, when Linux was promised as a revival. Linux ran well on old hardware, whereas Windows XP required all this extra RAM and HD space. Some Linuxes still do run on old hardware, and can help revive an old machine by turning it into a dedicated ftp or dhcp server or something, but only in non-graphical modes. Anything involving X is now massive.
And why? Probably has to do with that "Linux on the desktop" thing - bulk it up in order to impress home users. Also, that whole "big hardware leads to big software" thing - Linux may have tried to avoid that trap at the start, but it's hard, because you can do so much more with more space.
I suspect we're going to have to accept that most all OSes are relative to current hardware. And the best option for old hardware is an old OS.
piratePenguin:
Ubuntu runs extremely fine on my eee pc, that I multi-task on for hours every day. (When I purchased my eee pc I thought it would be much more crippling to depend on it, but even when I needed to run a Windows virtual box as well as other things I learned the difference between an eee pc and a €1,000 laptop from a performance perspective is small for almost everybody)
Then again low-grade modern computers always have at least 1 gig of cheap ram.
Btw, Kubuntu struggled a little bit on this hardware but it worked, now that there is a focus on KDE and GNOME (gnome 3 is coming and has lots of innovative plans btw) working better on smaller-than-laptop devices, I'd be expecting each release to have bigger priorities for performance work (particularly from kde at this stage in it's release cycle for kde 4). So I'm expecting when I try Kubuntu 10.04 it will work pretty good.
Aloone_Jonez:
--- Quote from: worker201 on 8 March 2010, 00:15 ---I think you may have missed Calum's point entirely. Then again, maybe I did too. But the first thing I thought of when I read his post was the scene from a few years ago, when Linux was promised as a revival. Linux ran well on old hardware, whereas Windows XP required all this extra RAM and HD space. Some Linuxes still do run on old hardware, and can help revive an old machine by turning it into a dedicated ftp or dhcp server or something, but only in non-graphical modes. Anything involving X is now massive.
--- End quote ---
No, I haven't missed Calum's point, I actually agree with him: I hate bloatware. I was just pointing out how cheap it is to upgrade to 512MB RAM.
I think the thing we're forgetting is that XP came out in 2001 when 256MB was a lot of memory and 128MB was more the norm. Presumably he's using the latest Ubuntu and he says it has similar performance to XP.
There are graphical distributions that will run on crappy computers but most of them are probably pretty poor - Damn Small and Puppy Linux spring to mind.
Here's a list on Wikipedia, most are graphical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Linux
I noticed that most come with ABIWord and Gnumeric. I've tried both and although their light I wasn't impressed. I consider OpenOffice 1.1.5 to be better any day which I'd recommend, unless you have less than 64MB RAM.
I don't see the point in using the latest hardware, it's a waste of money unless you're into games. I just upgrade when I want to, not when some software company says I should.
reactosguy:
--- Quote from: piratePenguin on 11 February 2010, 18:42 ---I've been a gnome lover for a long time ('lover' is a bit deep, I've just stuck to it because it lets me do my work and it comes with ubuntu, and in years I've had no problems), but I've always had a huge appreciation for both the gnome and kde desktop environments and I think anyone who says their copresence in the GNU/Linux world is degenerative just doesn't get it.
Anyhow. KDE 4.4 was released recently - I still havent used it (it is a lot of effort to try; I pretty much consider switching DE almost equivalent to switching OS (and I would install kubuntu even if I dont need to), but it looks like it's time to do this)
http://kde.org/announcements/4.4/ They're polishing up (KDE 4 needed it the last time I was using it) while innovating away. Seems like a serious desktop to me. They also now have a netbook edition which seems particularly impressive. (since I use an eee pc I will probably use this)
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kde+netbook&page=&utm_source=opensearch
OS X has been the DE to beat* and maybe KDE has upped the ante? Startin to look like it.
* hugely subjective; but in any case OS X has an advanced (from a technical point of view but Im not sure about this from a power user pointof view) and polished interface, gnome has a simple interface that does its job good, and kde has a powerful and sexy interface that is coming together
--- End quote ---
The GUI of KDE 4.4 has improved significantly. Which now invalidates my WIN7-IS-RIPPEDOFF-OF-KDE claim.
Cheaper Dell Adamos please. Pass the Kool Aid and include Intel C2D SU9300, 64 GB SSD, Kubuntu 10.04 and 2 GB RAM please. :D
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